Wednesday, January 26, 2011

ExamDiff Pro 5.5: New Ignore Lines Options

The next version of ExamDiff Pro will introduce a redesigned View | Options | Compare panel that features two new options for ignoring lines: Ignore line ranges and Ignore blank lines at the end of a file.

Suppose that I'm comparing two files that have headers. In this case, the headers consist of the first four lines of each file, and I want to ignore them because they're not relevant to my comparison:

I can ignore this range of lines by going to View | Options | Compare and entering 1-4 into the Line ranges text box under Ignore lines:

Now, after re-comparing, the headers are ignored:

As another example, suppose I'm comparing a pair of text files, and one has some extra whitespace lines at the bottom that I want to ignore:

I could use the Ignore all blank lines option, but what if I only want to ignore those blank lines that appear at the end of a file? I can do this using the new Blank lines at the end of a file checkbox under Ignore lines:

After re-comparing, all blank lines at the end of each file are ignored:

I'm not sure about "Treat multiple blank lines as a single line" option. As to your other suggestions, they already are implemented: see Options | Compare ("Ignore changes in amount of white space", "Ignore trailing spaces", and "Ignore linebreak styles").